Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping Vol III, which contains the key injunction to yousuo zuowei (“take some actions”), but not its long-suffering flipside, taoguang yanghui (“hide brightness and cherish obscurity”)

Last year Ding argued passionately for cooperation with ASEAN, for complete clarification of China’s claims and even, in the latter article, that India and Vietnam should be allowed to explore oil Blocks 128 and 129. This time, however, he argues that China has done well out of the Scarborough Shoal standoff, and the lesson is that China should kickstart more of these incidents.

Ding is tapping into a very deep pool of rhetorical capital, which is discussed after the summary translation below.

There is a saying in Chinese diplomacy, taoguang yanghui, yousuo zuowei. But given China’s vastly-increased national power, it’s the latter phrase, meaning “take some actions”, that may be more important — especially when it comes to the South China Sea.

The heat has gone down around Scarborough Shoal [China is effectively in control of the atoll — SSC]. Experts have said that the outcome of the Scarborough Shoal standoff shows that there is a “Huangyan Model” that China can use to solve its other problems in the SCS.

Special total-coverage page in the Zhengzhou Evening News 郑州晚报, May 4, 2012. The headlines read: “We need to watch over this place”/Less than a day after returning, Hainan fishermen return to the “standoff”/”Wife, the fisheries administration is here, so relax!”

This year the PRC media have published a succession of detailed stories on the plight of Chinese fisherfolk through the South China Sea disputes.

There was no joy in 2011 for Spratly fishing boat captain Chen Songhan 陈松汉 of Taishan in Guangdong Province. He said that harassment from foreign gunboats had led to greatly increasing costs, declining fisheries resources, and decreasing benefits. And on May 9 last year, Beihai (Guangxi) fisherman Li Rixi’s 李日喜 fishing boat was siezed by foreign gunboats, causing economic losses of 1.23 million RMB, and he told the Yangcheng Evening Newshe was still a long way from recovering his strength.

In early May there emerged the tale of more Qionghainese fishermen who had come home to avoid a typhoon, then turned around the very next day and gone straight back to Scarborough Shoal to “participate in the standoff”. That story contained the rather unforgettable line, as one fisherman’s wife recalled hearing her husband saying:

Relax wife, the fisheries administration is here!

This was splashed across the special total-coverage page in the May 4 edition of the Zhengzhou Evening News seen at the top. According to that story, it was originally taken from the Legal System Evening News 法制晚报.

Mid-May saw the return of Xu Detan 许德潭, the skipper of one of the Scarborough protagonist vessels, Qiong-Qionghai 09099, and who had featured prominently in Xinhua’s stories the previous month. This time he was telling CCTV that he’d just brought back a bumper haul of fish, and that it was all thanks to FLEC and the State Oceanic Administration’s China Maritime Surveillance force. According to the English version (here), Xu said:

Our boats are everywhere around the island, and we are afraid of nothing. The Chinese Marine Surveillance ships kept in contact with us around-the-clock.

Actually, Xu sort-of uttered words to that effect, but he didn’t name either of the agencies. Instead, their names were inserted by a CCTV editor as the subtitles in this frame show:

Loida Nicolas Lewis “exposed” on the front page of NetEase (photo top-left), May 13, 2012. The caption beneath reads, “Identity of Philippines anti-Chinese demonstration plotter revealed”. On the right-hand side is a picture (which remains in the same place as of May 22) of China’s biggest Fisheries Law Enforcement Command ship, the Yuzheng-310, linking to a special saturation-coverage page dedicated to the Scarborough Shoal issue

I’m posting about stuff that happened more than a week ago, so i’ll start by apologizing to any readers who might have come here looking for up-to-date developments. To explain briefly, party-approved waves of media sensationalism, the Chinese public’s reaction to them, and the regime’s reactions to those public reactions, are crucial aspects of my research project, so my task is to document these in as much detail as i can. The PRC’s yearly South China Sea fishing ban, which started last week, has offered a much-needed circuit-breaker to ease the tensions, but even now that the wave has broken and rolled back, i still have a backlog of interesting conversations to discuss.

For those who mightn’t care to read all the way to the bottom to find out what might be buried down there, here’s a summary of what’s below:

Xinhua was the immediate source of war-preparations rumours denied by Ministry of Defense

PLA Daily’s piece on May 12 appears aimed at Dai Xu and his powerful pro-war backers in China

On Friday (May 11), as PRC-Philippines tensions eased with the reopening of diplomatic dialogue, the emphasis of Chinese media was very much on the small size of the touted “anti-Chinese” protests in Manila. But they were positively huge compared with the protests in Beijing the same day.

Phoenix’s Manila correspondent described the scale of the Manila protests as being “far from the scale the Philippine side had previously said”. However, many other media, including the official CNS news agency, specifically contrasted the small gatherings with the PRC Foreign Ministry’s ominous warnings.

After noting the arrest of a protester in Manila who tried to burn the Chinese flag, the short CNS report also carried, in its second paragraph, the Philippines government’s comment that the protests were initiated by ordinary people and were not encouraged by the government. Otherreports also emphasised the non-official (“民间”) nature of the protests, which also contrasted with the continuous official rhetoric accusing the Philippines government of whipping up anti-Chinese sentiment.

NetEase’s editors almost seemed to be implying that the government had overemphasised the threat posed by the protests. The top headline cluster on Friday ran:

But the NetEase comment thread on “Arrests for trying to burn Chinese flag” was full of wild rumours, stated as fact, of Chinese casualties in Manila — complete with shops torched and deaths in the dozens.

If it was an anti-American rally, “itching-to-death 痒死” [CCTV] would definitely say there were more than a million there. [5,618]

The third comment suggests why the top two comments were so popular, and why the Chinese government has to sometimes take drastic action to curb rumours: when people start really caring about an issue, one of their first instincts is to disbelieve whatever the official media says.

If the regime knew about these explosive rumours doing the rounds, however, it appears to have seen them as useful rather than harmful. Like the calls for human-flesh searches in previous days, they were not censored, and in fact they remain in place today, six days later.

But if the online-commenting public had been given carte blanche for their outrage, the same privileges certainly did not extend to the real-world public. At the Philippines’ embassy in Beijing, a handful of patriotic Beijing residents actually stared down the heavy policy presence to attempt to inform the Philippines that Huangyan Island belongs to China.

Their actions were barely reported by the Chinese media. A correspondent from China Radio International did make it down there, and found:

On North Xiushui Rd, where the Philippines embassy is, there were a certain number of police vehicles parked and four or five police officers on duty. A few men came and protested in front of the embassy. One male wearing a shirt with, “Protect Huangyan, diplay our country’s prestige,” written on it. He unfurled a banner with his fellows that read, “Huangyan is China’s historic territory, do not challenge China’s bottom line,” on one side and, “When one can restrain no more, one cannot keep restraint, 忍无可忍不会再忍” on the other.

Around 3.30 a male surnamed Li was preparing to protest when an embassy car drove in. Standing across from the main gate, he immediately pulled out and raised high a white paper sign with the slogan, “Love China, Love Huangyan,” written on it.

This report was certainly not widely publicised; it’s been deleted from the CRI website, and NetEase has done the same to its version. On Saturday morning 21cn posted a stub and the full article was posted on Phoenix, where it remains available, but it hasn’t been given any prominence at all judging by the mere 300 or so participants on its heavily-censored comments thread.

There is a certain logic in the general paucity of coverage — after all, the PRC media were all reporting on the lack of protesters in Manila. The few hundred who gathered in Manila were still roughly 100 times more numerous than their counterparts in Beijing. The CNR article even began with the observation that:

On the Huangyan Island issue the Philippines has incited its people’s emotions and encouraged its domestic and overseas populations to launch demonstrations aimed at China. But the Philippines’ actions have certainly not caused the Chinese masses any great worry, and there were definitely no large-scale gatherings at the Philippines’ embassy in Beijing to oppose its unjustifiable conduct, [just] sporadic protests by the masses.

It would probably have been more accurate to say that the Chinese government’s campaign to focus media attention and public anger on the issue, and its dire official warnings about large-scale anti-Chinese protests, have not caused large-scale gatherings.

With a leadership transition just around the corner it is unlikely that the regime would want to see any kind of street protest anywhere, least of all in Beijing. It could just be my skepticism about the degree to which Chinese people care about the South China Sea issue (for a fascinating individual case-study that vividly illustrates why, read the “Confessions of a patriot-used-to-be”), but surely the security forces must have been expecting a bit more than this feeble show of patriotism. Maybe most people who might have protested just knew better than to try in 2012. Photos found here.

That doesn’t mean the Chinese public, particularly the public when reading news and interacting online, did not or does not care about the Huangyan issue. I’m really just stating the obvious: that all the media attention and anger online has failed to translate into offline protest.

But the internet’s systems of collective expression amplify extreme voices, while at the same time its anonymity can also prompt people’s voices to become more extreme. The question i’m left with is: was the feebleness of this protest, in particular the fact that so few even tried to make their outrage heard, the result of government suppression, a reflection of Chinese people’s knowledge of the cycles of CCP politics, or is it just the result of not enough people actually caring?

It’s still early days, but my money would be on the latter. If my hunch is right, then the government will struggle to credibly play the audience-costs nationalism card on this issue because for that strategy to work, CCP China must convince its international adversaries that it genuinely beholden to public pressure. In the case of Scarborough Shoal, it has demonstrated just the opposite.

CCTV Nightly News 《晚间新闻》, 9 May, 2012.Voiceover: “This behaviour has caused an intense reaction and attention among the Chinese masses at home and abroad.“

Last Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry declared to the world that Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying 傅莹 had summoned the Philippines’ charge d’affaires in Beijing, Alex Chua, and told him, “I met with you twice last month, and demanded that the Philippines calm down . . . the Philippines has clearly not recognised that it is committing a serious mistake”. [EN|ZH]

“The Chinese side has also made all preparations to respond to any escalation of the situation by the Philippine side,” Madam Fu said, according to the MFA.

Although this was interpreted in some quarters (the WSJ’s headline-writing quarters at least) as signaling a hardline shift, the comment threads on the story on Phoenix and NetEase suggested that the Chinese online audience wasn’t buying it. Yet.

However, over the following couple of days a wave of hardline commentary and inflammatory coverage appeared to raise the hopes of those who, not to put too finer point on it, want China to start a war over Scarborough Shoal. According to a detailed survey conducted in late April by the Huanqiu Shibao‘s opinion polling centre (and widely publicised in the Chinese media, e.g. here), that describes almost 80% of the urban Chinese population.

We certainly shouldn’t take that result literally, for the survey was full of leading questions, probably because that’s the result it was designed to find. The majority of the population are, i suspect, quite apathetic, but the number strongly in favour of military action is definitely significant, if only because it’s China, where every percent of the population is 13 million people.

In Hong Kong on April 30, a PLA Navy Rear Admiral, Li Shihong, stated that “the moment the Central Military Commission makes a decision we will be dutybound to act”. If we needed another example of Chinese media sensationalism, the treatment of this story today looks like a pretty classic one.

Admiral Li’s statement was an entirely innocuous response, it appears from the video here, to a journalist’s question about what the PLA navy thinks it should should be doing about the ongoing Scarborough Shoal standoff: await instructions from the Central Military Commission.

I know i was taken in; the headline and the treatment of the story made it seem as though Rear Admiral Li, who also happens to be Deputy Chief of Staff for the PLAN’s South China Sea Fleet, was implying that the central leadership had failed to be decisive in its handling of the issue.

The story became QQ.com’s most-commented for the day, and the sixth-most commented for the week.

On Phoenix it’s currently the #4 most-commented story. The top comments from both the Phoenix and the QQ.com discussion threads suggest that i was far from alone in my initial mistaken reading of Commodore Li’s words. First Phoenix’s 59,000-strong thread:

I have confidence in our military, but I wish the decision-makers would draw their swords when they should. [12,525 recommends]

This is a request to go to war! Courageous, the whole country’s everyday people support the PLA! [7396]

This approach is very good. The people are all waiting for the centre to issue the order! [5444]

And the QQ.com thread, with 110,000+ participants,

So the military’s top levels have declared they are not afraid of war, now the ball is back in the central [leadership’s] court. The central Party should declare its position as to whether or not it is afraid of war! Today South Korea seized more Chinese fishermen and fishing boats, so which is it to be – war or suing for peace? [20,805 supports]

The people are being held back, and actually the PLA are being held back even more, yelling slogans all day like “protect the country, serve the people”! But, since orders must be obeyed, they can only watch those stupid idiots prancing around on our territory and claiming that they’re the ones being invaded. In decision-making, although war harms both sides, and it might affect us into the future, if we don’t attack then China will forever be the one to suffer. [17,251]

Don’t forget, Philippines, China has a full 5,000 years of history [. . .] <—- Nonsense, what can you do with your distinguished history? <—- If we don’t attack then this 5,000-year thick skin should stand us in good stead. [6,032]

[. . .]

The PLA Navy are good, the people eagerly await your victorious fight. [2,656]

What that means is, there is now no-one who can make decisions! Helpless! [2,385]

This treatment of an innocuous, standard comment would do any of Rupert Murdoch’s rags proud. However, if commercial imperatives, and hence the market, is what is driving such behaviour, then this indicates a growing demand for news about the South Sea issue on from the Chinese public. It will be interesting to do some case-study comparisons between South China Sea coverage during this Scarborough crisis, and other high-profile incidents in the past three or four years.

Aside from the Impeccable incident, which directly involved the US rather than Vietnam, the Philippines or Malaysia, i doubt any past altercation in the South China Sea became quite the media event that this one has.

Note: The Chinese term for Scarborough Shoal (or Scarborough Reef) is 黄岩岛, meaning Huangyan Island. As you will see, it’s really not an island at all, but i’m making the translation on its own terms.

Here we go:

Huangyan Island Overview

1. Huangyan Island (Scarborough Shoal) is the only one of the Zhongsha group of islands (Zhongsha Qundao) that protrudes above the waterline. It is surrounded by a ring-shaped reef with water depth between 0.5 and 3 metres. The atoll is the shape of a right triangle, and encloses lagoon of 130 square kilometres with water depth of 10 to 20 metres. In the southeastern corner there is a 400-metre-wide channel that links the lagoon with the outside ocean, through which medium-sized fishing boats and small naval vessels can enter. It is an extremely good fishing area and a shelter during storms.

2. In terms of geographical position Huangyan Island is about 800 kilometres from Hong Kong, and about 350 kilometres from the Philippine capital Manila. Like the Spratly Islands, the area around Huangyan is an important shipping lane, at the throat of the main thoroughfare into and out of Subic Bay (Philippines). In addition, the area is super-rich in marine resources, producing plenty of economically valuable species of fish.

3. Scattered pieces of reef appear above the waterline around the Huangyan Island atoll, each piece with a surface area of approximately 1 to 5 square metres.

4. This is the biggest of Huangyan Island’s rocks, R2. According to the relevant rules of the International Convention on the Law of the Sea, islands are naturally formed land areas that are above the waterline at high tide. Confirmed islands can be used to draw baselines for territorial waters, exclusive economic zones and continental shelf areas.